Skin

 

When I was a kid, back in the 1950s and 1960s, we were sent out into the summer sun without a care. At the beach or pool you could almost hear the sizzle of skin frying and smell the aroma of coconut fried chicken. We were the fried chicken. No such thing as sun-block back then. In fact what my mom put on us, and what was sold at the drug store, were products that enhanced the sun rays. In a highly segregated society where people born with dark skin were treated as second class citizens, white people smeared Coppertone suntan lotion all over themselves. Coppertone, so we could make our pasty skin a rich dark brown. I do remember getting sunburned on a few occasions, but mostly I tanned. I tanned really well, and people would make jokes about me possibly not being of Northern European heritage.

This summer I’m trying to stay out of the sun. Usually I get dry skin during the winter, but by springtime my skin would bounce right back. Not this year. It might be from the chemo, but this summer my skin looks like crepe paper. I have finally acquired the look of somebody my age. Full on gray hair, the wrinkly skin, and bruises. Yes, bruises like you might have seen on your grandmother if she lived a long life. Nobody has beat me up, but my arms look like a pear that has been sitting in the bowl of fruit too long. I don’t even have to bump into anything. Simply a gentle breeze wafting across my arm and a bruise appears. As for the dry, wrinkly skin, maybe I should have stayed in Florida. The ninety percent humidity does wonders for your skin. Plumps it right up, like a raisin in a bran muffin.

Grandpa on a Ladder

1961                      Today

For those who wonder what happened with my chemo treatments, I finished them almost three weeks ago. I’m still a bit weak, but life goes on. In fact the doctor encouraged me to keep doing the things I’ve always done while on the chemo. So that’s why I kept bowling every Friday and did other things that literally took my breath away, like walking my dogs. You’d be amazed at how much energy it takes to bend over and pick up dog poop.

On Friday of this past week I noticed a sag in the roof of my garage. So I went inside the garage and took a look at the rafters. Sure enough, one of them was split and that split was right over the front end of my ‘classic’ Mercedes. Either the heavy, wet snow we had in January had cracked it, or the squirrel that lives in my garage put on too much weight. I pondered the problem. Should I have a new garage built? No, that would blow up my budget. Find a handyman to fix the rafter? No, that would also blow up my budget. Then I remembered my grandfather, Bill Webb. He helped my dad jack up the roof of our house in Tinley Park to build a dormer. They borrowed old fashioned automobile bumper jacks to do the job and lifted the roof. Hell, I have a jack and it’s much better than those old bumper jacks. Then I thought about how I would do the job. Marry two boards to the old rafter with some bolts was the best way. That was what I would do despite the fact that I’m a doddering seventy five year old man. But hell, Grandpa was seventy five years old when he was crawling around on the roof building that dormer with my dad.

I got the job done, despite not having any help. It only took me two days, a lot of cursing, and some very sore muscles. Remember, I just got over chemo treatments and my body is still pretty weak. Luckily, I didn’t fall nor did the roof cave in and kill me. The real test will come in about seven or eight months when the snow starts blowing and the squirrels scamper across the roof of the garage looking for a way to get in.

Alien Port

 

Have you ever gone through something in your life, something that you hope you’ll never have to go through again because it was so unpleasant? Well, shit happens. Again.

Thirty seven years ago I had a cancer and had to do twelve weeks of intense chemotherapy. It was unpleasant.  A week from today I start another twelve chemotherapy treatments for transitional cell carcinoma in my kidney. I think it’s stage three, but it might be stage two. I’m not sure because I tend to space out and my eyes glaze over when the doctors are talking to me. It gets to be too much information, too fast.

Last week they put what they call a ‘chemo port’ in my chest. Some kind of tube that they’ll use to administer the chemo. Which is fine with me. The last time I did chemo, I opted for no port and had to go through a poke in the vein every week. It turned out that I opted for the wrong thing because it hurt more and more with each treatment. Anyway, this time I got the port and it is creepy. A lump of plastic under my skin with a giant purple bruise that spreads out past my nipple. I can’t help thinking of the movie ‘Alien’ every time I touch it. Like maybe it’s going to pop out from under my skin and skiddle across the room. Oh well, I’ll just have to pull up my big boy pants, grit my teeth, and deal with it because it will all be over at some point. One way or another.

Fried Kidney

 

I turned seventy five years old about two weeks ago. I don’t think I’m old, but since I turned seventy things around me have got weird. For instance I feel some doctors think they’re wasting time healing a guy who’s going to die soon anyway. So I have to keep reminding them that my grandfather lived almost to one hundred and two, and Mom lived ninety nine years. Also, young people don’t seem to see me. I’m just an impediment between them and the cute, hot people on the other side of the room. So I get out of the way. Worst thing about living past seventy is your body starts breaking bits and pieces before the things that broke the month before can heal. If you read my earlier blog posts, you know of my problems. Now that they yanked one of my kidneys out of me, it turned out that the kidney had a cancerous tumor. Well, son of a bitch. I now have twelve weeks of chemo-therapy ahead. All I ask it that my hair doesn’t all fall out again. I went through that thirty seven years ago, and clumps of hair washing down the shower drain creeped me out.